Miklós Vajna has announced that the second test release of Frugalware Linux 1.5, a general-purpose distribution featuring the Pacman package manager and a large online software repository, is out and ready for testing: "The Frugalware developer team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Frugalware 1.5pre2, the second technical preview of the upcoming 1.5 stable release. Here are some of the major improvements, fixes and updates since 1.5pre1: Package updates - Linux kernel 2.6.39, LibreOffice 3.4, KDE 4.6.4; the boot splash is now provided by Plymouth; i686 and x86_64 kernels can now boot from EFI, however, the bootloader is not yet installable from setup; in addition to EFI support, GPT partition tables are now enabled, GPT fdisk is the recommended partitioner for this." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: frugalware-1.5pre2-i686-dvd1.iso (4,261MB, SHA1).

Linux Deepin is a Chinese community distribution based on Ubuntu and featuring the GNOME desktop and numerous usability enhancements. The second beta version of Linux Deepin 11.06 was just released this Monday. There are two major changes: the ISO image is now generated with the Hybrid mode so that users can easily boot their computers from USB media; improved user experience via Packages.LinuxDeepin.com where all unofficial Ubuntu warehouse (like PPA, Medibuntu, and LinuxMint) are cached. Besides quite a few bug fixes, there are observable package adjustments like the inclusion of DeadBeef 0.5.1 with patches and the brand new Firefox 5.0, as well as the downgrade of Compiz from version 0.9 to 0.8. The installer now only supports Chinese and English, and ibus-chewing the input method for Traditional Chinese is added. Caveat: due to DNS problems, upgrading from earlier versions now becomes a bit different. Check the complete release notes (in Chinese) for full information. Download (MD5): deepin_11.06-beta2_i386.iso (652MB), deepin_11.06-beta2_amd64.iso (679MB).

Alan Baghumian has announced the availability of the second test release of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7, a Debian-based desktop distribution with GNOME 2.32: "Our second testing release of Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7 is out now. This version merges all the published security and bug-fix updates. Several packages have been upgraded to their newer versions, such as Evolution 2.32.3, GParted 0.8.1, Iceweasel 4.0.1, Chromium 11 and NetworkManager 0.8.4. Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7 is built on top of the rock-solid Debian testing branch as of Feb 7, 2011 and brings tons of updated packages. We decided to ship GNOME 2.32 with this version and GNOME 3.0 is planned for Parsix GNU/Linux 4.0. We will follow this testing release with our classic three-step development releases and are looking to release the final version in late June or early July." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download: parsix_3.7r0-TEST-2-i386.iso (948MB, MD5), parsix_3.7r0-TEST-2-amd64.iso (961MB, MD5).